Being the Continuing Adventures of a Woman and her Trusty Kayak in New York Harbor, the Hudson River, and Beyond.
(with occasional political rants just to keep things lively!)

Saturday, March 04, 2006

BCU/Greenland Week - Learning the Ropes

I got kind of busy this week, it actually ended up being a great only-in-NY kind of week - taught kayaking on Wednesday, Thursday night I did make it to the historic harbor films at Pier 63, and then on Friday I ended up rather spontaneously going to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company (I usually talk about Richard, who was the guy telling me to stay in the boat in that surf capsize I wrote about earlier this week, in the context of being my first real kayaking mentor, but he's also a dancer with the PTDC - I feel like I'm name dropping when I talk about that so I don't very much). Long story short, I'll be continuing posting about the BCU/Greenland week but I have some cleaning & errands & stuff to do - writing will be my reward for restoring my apartment to something closer to order. But in the meantime here's a few pictures of instructors playing on ropes!

Shawna Franklin trying & not quite getting one where you sit on the ropes, flip yourself over, then right yourself again - Dubside makes this one look particularly simple, but it's tricky to keep the ropes from slipping up to your knees. I think Shawna did get this one eventually. That's Steve Maynard watching her.

And then Steve had to try. Steve turned out to have a lot of aptitude for it -

here he is getting ready -

over he goes!

and then back up again - showing the leg extension that brings you right-side up again

I tried this one myself later when there wasn't as much of an audience - I couldn't even get myself upside down, I still can't figure out how but somehow I'd go over, hit 90 degrees and come to a complete halt like that!

Shawna's turn again, Dubside is helping her get set up for one where you start out looking like you are in the world's most uncomfortable hammock - then you roll over so you are hanging from underneath, then you turn yourself over again - I think she got this one once Dubside got her set up correctly. Lots of core strength & coordination demanded here as you can probably imagine.

The historic harbor films btw were terrific, I was SO glad the weather was so awful because otherwise they probably wouldn't have been able to take walk-ups - as it was, they had it in a tent on the barge instead of on the Frying Pan, so we all froze our butts off, but as I said to John Doswell, who's one of the Working Harbor folks, it was worth a couple hours of being cold. In addition to the ones listed, the film historian brought a few bonuses - he started out with a Betty Boop cartoon just to get the projector set up, then he showed Little Toot, and finished with a short film called King of Coney Island, great 50's film of Coney Island in the summertime, narrated by Deno's Wonder Wheel (the self-declared King!). Fun stuff, John said they might do it again & if they do I'll talk it up a lot more a lot sooner (but not 'til I've got my ticket).